A collection of articles by Robin Sloan [link dump]

Posted: December 12, 2016

A few years ago, I discovered an author. His name is Robin Sloan, and he writes things that resonate with me, including the Wonderful Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour bookstore (which is likely my favorite novel of the last ten years.) Sloan is also a fairly prolific essayist, and some of his essays touch on ideas that are important and realted to the work that I do. This is a quick collection of links to some of his essays, projects, and short stories–along with a brief description of each–(posted half for personal reference.)

Years ago, when the Internet was Interesting Sloan particiapted in an online community called TinyMUSE. He writes about it here, and in doing so, paints a picture of the early internet that feels present, alive, and accessible.

MicroMUSE, as it’s presented here, has a lot in common thematically with the forthcoming Cyberpunk MUSH/MUD from Of Many Trades, including some shared herritage in the codebase.

The article is worth reading, even if you aren’t a fan of early internet culture.

Have you ever wanted a computerized writing partner that had been trained on the works of every scifi author of the early 20th century? Here is that writing partner, along with some musings on the nature of machine intelegence.

That’s the meat of this article. What makes a novel a novel? Also contains a link to one of my favorite short stories (The Branch Library of Babel It’s like Borges’ Library, but all the books are Moby Dick.)